I went up to their doors and listened; they was snoring. So I walked along on my toes, and got down the steps all right.
There weren’t a sound anywhere.
I looked through an opening of the door to where the men that was watching the body was, and seen that they was all asleep on their chairs. In another room where the body itself was, there was a candle. The door was open; but I seen there weren’t nobody in there but the body of old Peter; so I went on by; but the front door was locked, and the key wasn’t there. Just then I heard someone coming down the steps, back behind me. I run in the other room and took a fast look around, and the only place I seen to hide the bag was in the box with the body. The cover was open only about a foot, showing the dead man’s face down in there, with a wet cloth over it. I pushed the money-bag in under the cover, just down below where his hands was crossed, which made me feel strange, they was so cold, and then I run back across the room and in behind the door.
The person coming was Mary Jane. She went to the box, very soft, and got down on her knees in front of it and looked in; then she put up a cloth to her eyes, and I see she started to cry. Her back was to me and I couldn’t hear her, but I was able to move quietly out the door behind her.
I went up to bed, feeling a little blue, because things had played out that way after I had took so much trouble and faced so much danger doing it. If it could stay where it was, all right; because when we got down the river a hundred miles or two I could write back to Mary Jane, and she could dig him up and get it; but that ain’t what’s going to happen; the thing that’s going to happen is, the money will be found when they come to screw on the cover. Then the king will get it again, and it’ll be a long day before he gives anyone another go at taking it. I wanted to go down and get it out, but it was too dangerous. Every minute it was getting earlier, and pretty soon them watchers would start to wake up, and I might get caught -- with six thousand dollars in my hands that nobody hadn’t told me to take. I don’t wish to be mixed up in no such business as that, I says to myself.
When I got down there in the morning the room with the body was shut up, and the watchers was gone. There weren’t nobody around but the family and the widow Bartley and our lot. I watched their faces to see if anything had been happening, but I couldn’t tell.
Toward the middle of the day the funeral man come with his helper, and they put the box in the middle of the room on two chairs, and then put all our chairs in lines, and borrowed more from the neighbours until all the rooms was full. I see the cover for the box was the way it was before, but I wasn’t brave enough to go and look in under it, with people around.
Then the people started to come in, and those two dogs and the girls took chairs in the front at the head of the body, and for a half an hour the people walked around slow, in a line, and looked down at the dead man’s face a minute, and some dropped in a tear, and it was all very quiet and serious, only the girls and the king and the duke holding cloths to their eyes and keeping their heads forward, and crying softly. There weren’t no other sound but the rubbing of feet on the floor and blowing noses -- because people always blows them more at a funeral than they do at other places apart from church.
When the place was as full as it could be the funeral man he moved around in his black gloves with his soft ways, putting on the last touches, and getting people and things all right and comfortable, and making no more sound than a cat. He never spoke; he moved people around, he squeezed in late ones, he opened up doors to side rooms, and done it all with movements of his head, and signs with his hands. Then he took his place over against the wall. He was the smoothest, softest, quietest man I ever seen; and there weren’t no more smile to him than there is to a piece of meat.
They had borrowed a little piano like instrument that used wind to work -- a sick one; and when everything was ready a young woman sat down and worked it, and it was pretty loud and sickly, and everybody joined in singing, and Peter was the only one that had a good thing, the way I saw it. Then the Reverend Hobson opened up, slow and serious, and started to talk; and straight off the most awful noise broke out in the basement; it was only one dog, but he made a most powerful noise, and he kept it up right along; the preacher he had to stand there, over the body, and wait -- you couldn’t hear yourself think. It was right down embarrassing for everyone, and nobody didn’t seem to know what to do. But pretty soon they see that long-legged funeral man make a sign to the preacher as much as to say, "Don’t you worry -- just trust me." Then he leaned down and started to move along the wall, just his shoulders showing over the people’s heads. He moved along, with the noise getting worse and worse all the time; and at last, when he had gone around two sides of the room, he goes down the steps to the basement. Then in about two seconds we heard a loud hit, and the dog he finished up with a most surprised cry or two, and then everything was dead quiet, and the preacher started his serious talk where he left off.
In a minute or two here comes this funeral man’s back and shoulders moving along the wall again; and so he went around three sides of the room, and then stood up, and half covered his mouth with his hands, and leaned his neck out toward the preacher, over the people’s heads, and says, in a kind of rough whisper, "He had a rat!"
Then he dropped down and moved along the wall back to his place. You could see that the people were glad to hear it, because they all wanted to know what had been going on. A little thing like that don’t cost nothing, and it’s just the little things that makes a man to be looked up to and liked. There weren’t no more liked man in town than what that funeral man was.
Well, the preaching was very good, but poison long; and then the king he pushed in and got off some of his same old foolishness, and at last the job was through, and the funeral man started to come up on the box with his screw-driver. I was worried then, and watched him pretty closely. But he never made any trouble at all; just moved the cover along as smooth as pig fat, and screwed it down tight and fast. So there I was! I didn’t know if the money was in there or not. So, says I, what if someone has robbed that bag secretly? -- now how do I know if I should write to Mary Jane or not? What if she was to dig him up and not find nothing, what would she think of me? Blame it, I says, I might get hunted up and put in prison; I’d better keep quiet, and not write at all; the thing’s awful mixed up now; trying to better it, I’ve made it worse a hundred times, and I wish to God I’d just let it alone.
They buried him, and we come back home, and I went to watching faces again -- I couldn’t help it, and I couldn’t rest easy. But nothing come of it; the faces didn’t tell me nothing.
The king he visited around in the evening, and was sweet to everyone; and he give out that his church over in England would be worried about him, so he must hurry and sell up right away and leave for home. He was very sorry he was so pushed, and so was everybody; they wished he could stay longer, but they said they could see it couldn’t be done. And he said him and William would take the girls home with them; and that made everybody happy, because then the girls would be well fixed and with their relatives; and the girls were happy too -- they were so enthusiastic about it that it was like they never had a trouble in the world. They told him to sell out as fast as he wanted, they would be ready. Them poor things was that glad it made my heart hurt to see them getting tricked and lied to so, but I didn’t see no safe way to cut in and change the song.
Well, blamed if the king didn’t advertise the house and the slaves and all the furniture to be sold two days after the funeral; and anyone could buy before that if they wanted to.
So the next day after the funeral, along about noon, the girls’ happiness got the first big kick. Two slave buyers come along, and the king sold them the slaves cheap and away they went, the two sons up the river to Memphis, and their mother down the river to Orleans. I thought them poor girls and them slaves leaving would break their hearts; they cried around each other, and took on so it almost made me sick to see it. The girls said they hadn’t ever dreamed of seeing the family separated or sold away from the town. I can’t ever stop remembering them poor sad girls and slaves hanging around each other’s necks and crying; and I think I couldn’t a taken it all, but would a had to break out and tell on our gang if I hadn’t knowed the sale weren’t true and the slaves would be back home in a week or two.
The thing made a lot of talk in town, too, and a good many come out straight and said it was wrong to separate the mother and the children that way. It hurt those two phonies some; but the old man he pushed right along, against all the duke could say or do, and I tell you the duke was feeling pretty guilty.
Next day was sale day. When the sun was well and truly up the king and the duke come up in the top of the house to wake me, and I seen by their look that there was trouble.
The king says: "Was you in my room night before last?"
"No, sir, your lord" -- which was the way I always called him when nobody but our gang was around.
"Was you in there yesterday or last night?"
"No, your lord."
"Tell the truth, now -- no lies."
"Before God, my lord, I’m telling the truth. I ain’t been near your room since Miss Mary Jane showed it to you."
The duke says: "Have you seen anyone else go in there?" "No, my Lord, not as I remember, I believe."
"Stop and think."
I studied it for a while and seen my opening; then I says:
"Well, I seen the slaves go in there a few times."
Both of them gave a little jump, and looked like they hadn’t ever thought of it, and then like they had.
Then the duke says: "What, all of them?"
"No -- at least, not all at once -- that is, I don’t think I ever seen them all come out at once but just one time."
"Hello! When was that?"
"It was the day we had the funeral. In the morning. It wasn’t early, because I was late getting up. I was just starting down the ladder, and I seen them."
"Well, go on, go on! What did they do? How’d they act?"
"They didn’t do nothing. And they didn’t act anyway much, as far as I seen. They walked on their toes going away; so I seen, easy enough, that they’d gone in there to do up your lord’s room, thinking you was up; and found you weren’t, and so they was hoping to not get in trouble for waking you up."
"Great guns, this is a go!" says the king; and both of them looked pretty sick and more than a little foolish. They stood there a-thinking and scratching their heads a minute, and the duke he broke into a kind of a little scratchy laugh, and says:
"It does surprise me how well the slaves played their hand. They let on to be sorry they was going away from here! And I believed they was sorry, and so did you, and so did everybody. Don’t ever tell me any more that a black man ain’t got any acting ability. Why, the way they played that thing it would a tricked anybody. As I see it, there’s a lot of money in ‘em. If I had the money and a theatre, I wouldn’t want a better team than that -- and here we’ve gone and sold ‘em for a song. Yes, and for now, we can’t even sing the song yet. Say, where IS that song -- that cheque the buyer paid with?"
"In the bank, waiting to be cleared. Where would it be?"
"Well, that’s all right then, thank God."
Says I, kind of shy-like: "Is something gone wrong?"
The king turns on me and shouts out: "None of your business! You keep your head shut, and look to your own business -- if you got any. Long as you’re in this town don’t you forget that -- you hear?" Then he says to the duke, "We got to just wear it and say nothing: quiet’s the word for us."
As they was starting down the ladder the duke he laughs again, and says:
"Fast sales and not much to be made by it! It’s a good business -- yes."
The king turns around angrily on him and says: "I was trying to do what was best in selling ‘em out so fast. If it turns out that we lost on it, am I to be blamed any more than you?"
"Well, they’d be in this house yet and we wouldn’t if I could a got my thinking listened to."
The king argued back as much as was safe for him, and then changed around and shouted at me again. He give me down the river for not coming and telling him I seen the slaves come out of his room acting that way -- said anyone would a knowed something was up. And then he danced in and argued with himself for a while, and said it all come of him not sleeping in and having a good rest that morning, and he’d be blamed if he’d ever do it again. So they went off a-talking; and I felt very glad I’d worked it all off onto the slaves, and yet hadn’t done them no trouble by it.